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Tuesday, September 13, 2016

The Winter Gypsy || Page I

Potentially because I have quite a unique one myself, but I get very excited about names. I know you aren't meant to judge a book by its cover, but I'm 100% guilty of judging by a name. So when I saw a band called The Winter Gypsy appear in my inbox, I was intrigued. And thankfully not disappointed.

I could go on for ages about this band, their energetic, easy grooving beats and those vocals.. But they can do themselves a lot more justice than I can. So sit back and take it all in, this is a train I'd be willing to travel for days.

So to start, where did the band The Winter Gypsy come from, how did you become the group we know today?
We all kind of knew each other through various mutual friends. I started The Winter Gypsy with Max. It was a project that I had been wanting to start for the past couple of years, but never really found anyone I wanted to venture into it with until I met Max. I had been jamming with Dave and Isaac since 2012. Max knew Jonny through music school and we all met Sean through Dave, and he kind of joined our band when we went on a road trip to play in Canberra. He filled in for Jonny who was unable to make the trip.

Now we are a family.

What about the name; is there a story behind it or did you just like the sound?I came up with the name. I usually played backyard shows with Dave (pianist) when we both started to collaborate. Friends used to call us gypsies because of our style and the way we would just set up anywhere, shoeless, and play a set filled with random sounds involving, guitar, piano, melodica and xylophone, topped off with some vocal harmonies. Winter happens to be my favourite season of the year. during Winter, 2014, I had come up with the name, and it stuck with me. You’re about to start a string of tour dates, how’s the preparations going?
It's going well. Max and I planned it all ourselves, so we're stoked with it. We planned our tour in the span of three weekends. We're kind of treating our first east coast tour as a holiday more than anything! [NB: Tour is underway.]

The latest track has a really special story behind it, can you share that with us?
Back in 2008, Tush's mum was diagnosed with breast cancer, and she continued to battle this until 2011 when she finally overcame it. Following this Tush moved schools and really started to focus more on music.
The single Took Me By relates to the thoughts that were going through his head during this time in his life - "...Paradise we live in is coming to an end". However the song itself is also about the uncertainty and fragility of situations that are out of your control. Despite the minimal lyrics, the message resonates through the song. It was written in 2012, and had previously been recorded three times, but due to the personal nature of the song Tush wasn't willing to release it until he was content with the sound; a feat that has now been accomplished

You’ve had so much praise from the media already, did that make you guys more or less nervous for the EP?
It definitely didn't make us nervous. If anything, we were excited for people to hear the rest of our songs.